Mr. Nasty: Part 2

What made Nastase the first casualty of the Open era?

That Illie Nastase would be the first casualty of the Open era wasn't all that surprising. He had come to stardom midway through his career and been caught unprepared.

Mobbed by teenage girls at Wimbledon one year, he shook his head incredulously, "I don't understand it. I'm 31 and very ugly."

Inhibited and innocent in his early days on tour-his friend and mentor Ion Tiriac had to pay for Nastase to lose his virginity to a Paris prostitute-and with no map laid out for him by any professional predecessors, when he did hit the big time, he had played too much, spread himself too thin, and overindulged in the temptations of the road.

"Tennis is a sport where there's no shortage of girls willing to sleep with a player, just for the hell of it," he said.

Still, just because he slept with one in one city didn't mean she got to travel with him to the next. "When you visit a beach each week, why take a bucket of sand with you from the last beach?" he asked.